Like I said, after years of looking at the conduct of the Japanese in WWII, I had difficulty feeling any sympathy, but over time, I came to pity many of them. They were put out there and left to die, often by starvation, or their own hand.
Obviously, I am not the only one to struggle with this.
One of my favorite stories (which illustrates that Westerners did notice this cultural disparity) was the famous journey the USS Astoria made to Japan in 1939 carrying the ashes of the highly respected Japanese ambassador Hirosi Saito who had died while in the USA. (You can read about it here: The Saito Cruise 1939
US-Japanese relations were quite difficult at that time, but this was a special case.
IIRC, even though this was a diplomatic mission, there was a lot of military tension on both sides.
When they prepared to go ashore, Captain Turner selected the biggest, brawniest sailors he could find to serve as the armed honor guard for the delivery of the ashes, and even (to the chagrin and irritation of the Marine Corps detachment aboard) took the biggest Marines and made them wear sailors uniforms (you can see below, wearing the flat hats!) 
Anyway, it was a big to-do, the crew was treated on liberty by the Japanese quite well, but in the formal dinner party of all the ships officers held with prominent Japanese Naval officers, there was real tension and barely disguised (sometimes not disguised) hostility by the Imperial Japanese Navy representatives towards their American counterparts.
But to the point of our discussion of Japanese culture, and this includes Japanese women...one US Navy officer later said (I have to paraphrase, I don't have it exactly) "I could never understand how the Japanese women could be so beautiful and sweet, and the Japanese men could be such sons-of-bitches!"
Well, we would find out for ourselves just a few years later just how true at least one part of that statement was. On August 9, 1942, Japanese sent the USS Astoria to the bottom of Ironbottom Sound during the Battle of Savo Island. Quite an ironic turnaround there.